Journalist Cuffed for Shooting NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Action

Posted on: January 31st, 2013 3 Comments
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There has been a lot of controversy about New York City police’s stop-and-frisk policy which in most cases leads to harassment of innocent people. The statistics show that around 85% of people stopped were Latino or Black and 82% were innocent of any crime. But most NYPD cops go on with it, and in the light of current ruling that proved part of the stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, the last thing they want is the physical evidence of this practice.

Brooklyn-based photojournalist Shimon Gifter happened to catch one of these scenes on tape and ended up with a broken camera and handcuffed. He was going about his usual business, looking for interesting things to shoot for a couple of Jewish websites he works for, when he heard cops calling for backup not far away.

Gifter rushed to the spot expecting to find an intense scene. Instead he saw a couple of cops standing on the corner talking and a man cuffed in the back of the police van. He started talking to the bystanders to find out what happened and discovered that there was some sort of dispute but the rest of the suspects had run off.

Shortly after, four young men showed up at the scene and even though it didn’t look like they had anything to do with the previous altercation, they were detained by police. Gifter, who was standing about 100 feet from the scene, started shooting them. One of the cops warned him to stop because the suspect were juvenile and Gifter agreed and switched to recording other parts of the scene. That’s when a sergeant grabbed him from behind and handcuffed him, telling him he was under arrest for disobeying police orders.

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Gifter protested, stating that filming isn’t illegal, but the cop snatched his camera and dropped it on the ground seemingly on purpose. Gifter was released after 10 minutes and later realized that the harsh police reaction was probably connected to the recent fuss about stop-and-frisk. He is still trying to recover footage from the broken camera and has contacted the internal affair division demanding for this incident to be investigated.

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3 Responses

  1. terry wagar says:

    I was battered by four law officers and they arrested two of my daughters without a charge and then demanded signed waivers before they would release them!
    A month later under cover cops recruited my wife into an affair and then my wife turned our daughters against me, and when I caught my wife and her daughters secretly meeting up with that cop my wife poisoned the hell out of me!
    Police made sure I could not get help from any hospital no doctor would take a toxicology test so it was covered up by denial of emergency services!
    My wife kept me ill with poisons while her lover the cop and his buddy’s were having fun framing me for their crimes and they even publicly gave me blame for their crimes using flyers!
    I got a audio death threat from these cops admitting they pedofied me using flyers and they bragged I cannot get help from 911 and they threatened to kill other people in an attempt to scare me into silence!
    I report this publicly because no one with a badge cares or will take my complaint.

  2. terry wagar says:

    Nobody arrests cops for breaking the LAW so why the hell are people being arrested for disobeying police orders!?
    I don’t work for the police I don’t take ORDERS from cops!
    When citizens make complaints cops are supposed to TAKE those complaints and ACT on them!
    Cops are NOT supposed to be ordering around citizens on the cops whim!
    We citizens do not work for the police so police orders and THEIR REGULATIONS DO NOT APPLY TO US!
    Cops don’t like being recorded on the streets with children! GEE I WONDER WHY!?

  3. terry wagar says:

    Cops did not want to be caught on video ordering children around!
    Cops just don’t LIKE being Caught in something do they!

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